


war dog

by dizzyondreams



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Mental Instability, Other, allusions to past abuse, i just think about snafu a lot that's all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9429623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzyondreams/pseuds/dizzyondreams
Summary: He was already half mad before he started prying teeth from Japanese skulls, and wouldn’t let himself be called to heel when his platoon leader told him to fucking quit it, Snafu, for god’s sake. He would just grin, a show of teeth flecked with mud, mad dog, bad dog.





	

Snafu joined the marines for the food. That was it, pure and simple. No ideals of glory, because he knew better. Not for his country, because he’d yet to see anything his country had done for _him_. Three square meals, all the rice and goddamn maggots he could eat. That meant more than honour or patriotism when he was living meal to meal in some drafty shithole in New Orleans. 

He was already half wild before the war, because a life like his necessitated it. No family to speak of, half feral and smoking his meals. But in the mud of Okinawa he’d never felt so inhuman. Not when he was scrounging for food out of the trash, or when he was fourteen and had been sleeping on the streets. It changed him, made him see claws where there were only dirt blackened nails. Some nights he’d lie awake in his foxhole, ears pricked for enemy soldiers, and wonder if what he was becoming was worth it. Bared teeth, war dog, hungry for nothing but the gruel in front of him and sick to his stomach with the smell of rotting flesh and stinking fucking mud. 

Snafu came from violence, it curled through him with the blood of his ancestors. The senseless violence of war didn’t rattle him as badly as it did the others. He had grown up with sharp cracks across the face, senseless drunken brawls and bleeding onto cobblestones. If anything, fighting the Japanese was easier because he didn’t recognise the faces who were making him hurt. He carried this with him like a talisman, like the dime strung around his neck to ward off evil. He was dangerous goods, not to be trusted, not invested enough in the war to care which side lived or died, and the storm of himself roared under his skin like the sound of the sea and kept him safe.

He was already half mad before he started prying teeth from Japanese skulls, and wouldn’t let himself be called to heel when his platoon leader told him to fucking quit it, Snafu, for god’s sake. He would just grin, a show of teeth flecked with mud, mad dog, bad dog. The weight of his rifle in his arms became so familiar that he would jerk awake whenever it slipped. The war, the mud, the stink, it transformed him into something with sharp teeth and blackened hands and a growl constantly rattling in his throat. Are monsters born, or created? Was he birthed in a cheap two bedroom in the Ninth Ward, or in the mud of Okinawa? Did he spring fully formed from the wreckage of his past self after he killed his first man, after he took a knife to a dead man’s mouth for the first time, or was he made in hunger and poverty and the heavy heat of the south? It was in his bloodstream now, just as sure as his Creole blood, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever flush it out. 

Sometimes, in his shallow sleep, he would think about home. The sun beating down so fierce that the tarmac smelled hot, the way the pipes of his dilapidated apartment would creak in the winter, smoking in the late afternoon sun and the gnaw of hunger in the pit of his stomach. It was hard to believe that the sun in Okinawa was the same sun from his memories. It was hard to believe the sun shone at all. The beat of rain on his helmet, his poncho, drove him crazy. Just another notch in his rapidly waning sanity. 

The bad days were when he went hungry, because what the fuck was all this for if he was nauseous with hunger, dragging his mud caked ass through rains of bullets as his rifle trembled in his arms. The really bad days, well, Snafu didn’t remember them too clearly. 

The men thought he’d gone Asiatic, but Snafu didn’t have the words to tell them he was gone long before he started prising gold from corpses mouths. Now, at least he had a focus. He was a weapon, their machine, their dog, they owned him and fed him and told him what to do. And he did it, because that’s what dogs do, but hungry dogs are never loyal and Snafu made sure his squad knew that his compliance came with conditions. He wouldn’t bite the hand that fed him, but he sure as hell would try if it stopped. 

Every day that he spent up to his knees in mud and shit and dead bodies, the ugly beast inside him grew. He’d lie awake and wonder what would happen when it finally broke through, too huge and angry for the narrow confines of his dirty skin. Sometimes he felt it clawing at the back of his throat, when he was tired or hungry or sitting with his hands over his face to block out the dead around him. He was death, personified, blood on his hands and the cuffs of his shirt. Instead of a robe, field uniform, instead of a scythe, his rifle ingrained into the skin of his palms. And the monster knew it, and it wanted to devour.

“I wonder when this is all gonna stop.” Gene said, one night when they were awake in their foxhole, on high alert. He looked beaten down tired, pale skin streaked with dirt and blood. Snafu took a long draw on his cigarette, and eyed him under the rim of his helmet. His mouth tasted like shit, like mud and cigarettes and unbrushed teeth, and he spat on the ground before he replied.

“When they decide they’re sick of it.” He murmured, and Gene’s sidelong look made him grin, a flash of teeth. They, the higher power, the ones pulling the strings of this whole war machine. “We’re just pawns in their fucked up game.” He drawled, and delighted in the uncomfortable look Gene threw his way. His red hair was unruly over his forehead, the only colour in this washed out landscape of grey and khaki, and Snafu began to rethink his loyalties as he traced Gene’s sharp profile. If he was really the beast he found himself inching towards, maybe this was some kind of fucked up pack. He could feel hackles he didn’t have rising at the idea of any of them, Gene, Burgie, fucking Hamm-with-two-m’s, dying. 

Slogging through mud and coming under fire became easier, after that. When they were threatened, the monster lunged, teeth bared and ready to bite.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! comments r always appreciated :^)


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